This article presents a personal review by the author of Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, published in 1997. It explains how the book came to be written and makes some comments on the various criticisms it has attracted. The first section introduces key experiences that fed into the book followed by a brief summary of the key ideas that underpin its arguments. In reviewing the critiques, the article focuses in particular on the treatment of 'context', the emphasis on 'process', the use of 'social theory', and 'power', and the development of 'institutionalist' analysis. This is followed by a comment on the normative biases in the work. In conclusion, the author makes a plea for continuing attention to the complexity and diversity of urban governance contexts and the importance for practical action of grasping the particularities of situated governance dynamics.

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Improving the qualities of places is attracting increasing policy and academic interest in contemporary Europe. This raises questions about the appropriate governance capacity to deliver such improvements. I argue that a key element of such capacity lies in the quality of local policy cultures. Some are well integrated, well connected, and well informed, and can mobilise readily to act to capture opportunities and enhance local conditions. Others are fragmented, lack the connections to sources of power and knowledge, and the mobilisation capacity, to organise to make a difference. In recent years, the emphasis in attempts to change urban governance capacity, particularly in Britain, has been on encouraging catalytic projects and partnerships. Recent experience across Europe suggests that wider transformative effects are difficult to achieve without careful consideration of the partnership form and how it connects to the wider policy culture. They may also have the effect of increasing the fragmentation of local capacity. I examine the potential of collaborative approaches in place-making initiatives in achieving more effective and durable transformations. Collaborative approaches emphasise the importance of building new policy discourses about the qualities of places, developing collaboration among stakeholders in policy development as well as delivery, widening stakeholder involvement beyond traditional power elites, recognising different forms of local knowledge, and building rich social networks as a resource of institutional capital through which new initiatives can be taken rapidly and legitimately. They shift the task of urban planning from ‘building places’ to fostering the institutional capacity in territorial political communities for ongoing ‘place-making’ activities.

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This article reviews the developments in the new institutionalism in social science and their relation to communicative planning theory, with emphasis on the relevance to the practcal task of responding to demands for a more place-conscious evolution in public policy. I trace the evolution of forms of governance that are more responsive to the multiple claims and social worlds of civil society and include discussion of the social-constructionist conception of institutions, the significance of actors and networks, the interrelation between structure and agency, and the cultural dimesions of social networks. The implications for developing governance capability or instittional capacity are also explored. In reviewing comnmunicative planning theory, I discuss how Habermas's approach to communicative ation may be reworked or positioned in an institutionalist perspective. Finally, I explore how these developments can be used to dvelop understanding and strategies for evoling more inclusionary approaches to intgrated, place-focused public policy.

This paper draws on institutionalist approaches as developed in the fields of policy analysis and planning, to develop a methodological approach for assessing how the governance capacity for socially innovative action might emerge. After introducing the problematic of the search for governance relations which have the capacity for social innovation, the second and third parts of the paper summarise the emerging social-constructivist 'institutionalist' approach in policy analysis and planning. The fourth part draws on a three-level analytical model of governance dynamics to explore the dynamics and dialectics of urban governance transformation processes, illustrated with a case study of a socially innovative area-based initiative. The final section considers the power dynamics of episodes of socially innovative governance arising from within civil society and their potential to transform wider governance processes and cultures.

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